Chapter 19
nineteen
The taverna’s proprietor, a stocky woman in her sixties with flour on her apron, looked at him with the mild suspicion reserved for tourists who wandered in after dark looking for something authentic.
He ordered in halting Greek—lamb stew, bread, whatever cheese she had, two glasses of wine—and watched her expression soften slightly when he didn’t fumble the words too badly.
She brought it up herself twenty minutes later, balanced on a wooden tray she handed over at the bottom of the stairs without comment. He thanked her, and she waved him off and went back to her kitchen.
Vivi was sitting exactly where he’d left her when he pushed through the door, still touching the icon, still somewhere else entirely. She looked up when he set the tray on the table, and something crossed her face—surprise, maybe, or something softer that she didn’t quite manage to hide in time.
“Eat,” he said.
She looked at the food, then at him. “You went and got—”
“Eat, Viv.”
She ate. Not enthusiastically, not with any particular attention, but the way people ate when they’d forgotten hunger was a thing and then suddenly remembered.
He sat across from her and worked through his own bowl, and neither of them spoke, and it was the first silence between them all day that didn’t feel like something to survive.
When she finished, she pushed the bowl away and wrapped both hands around the wine glass without drinking from it.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Don’t mention it.”
She looked at the icon again. He wanted to say something useful, something that would actually help, but there wasn’t anything.
Sabin was still out there. Praetorian still had forty-eight hours to torture him.
There was nothing to do about any of it until Davey landed on this island, and words weren’t going to change that.
“I used to have nightmares about it,” she said suddenly, her voice so quiet he almost missed it. “About Istanbul. Being locked in that room.”
Dom went still. They didn’t talk about Istanbul. Not directly. It had always been all sharp edges and barbed comments, accusations hurled like grenades.
“Three days,” she continued, still staring at the icon. “I screamed until I lost my voice. Begged you to let me go. And you just... sat there. Watching me fall apart.”
He swallowed hard. “I know.”
“The worst part wasn’t the betrayal.” Her voice was steady, matter-of-fact.
“It was knowing that you did it because you loved me. That your love looked like a prison cell.” She turned her head then, meeting his eyes across the room.
“Do you have any idea what that does to a person? To realize that the man you love thinks loving you means taking away your choices?”
Dom’s chest tightened. He wanted—God, did he want—to offer some fresh version of the apology she’d heard a thousand times.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, the words utterly inadequate. “I’ve been sorry every day for three years.”
“I know.” She rubbed her eyes, suddenly looking exhausted. “That’s the hell of it. I know you’re sorry. I’ve always known. It doesn’t change anything.”
“Sabin made me promise.” He could see it all so clearly—the alley, the sirens, Sabin’s face tight with panic and determination.
“He grabbed me, right before he went out there to face the police. Said, ‘Get her out. Get her somewhere safe. Don’t let her come back for me, no matter what. Promise me.’”
She nodded. “I know that now.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think you understand.
I promised him,” Dom continued, “and when we got to the safe house, you were already planning how to go back, how to get him out. I knew you’d do it.
I knew you’d throw yourself into that fire for him.
And I was terrified of losing you. I’ve faced down armed hostiles without blinking, but the thought of you walking back into a Turkish prison and disappearing forever.
..” He rubbed his hand over his face, the stubble rough against his palm. “I couldn’t lose you.”
The memory of those hours in the safe house crawled up his spine.
The way she’d paced like a caged animal, plotting, scheming, growing more desperate with each passing hour.
The moment he’d realized what he was going to do—what he had to do—and the sick feeling in his gut as he’d slipped the sedative into her drink.
“So you locked me up instead.” Her voice was soft, not accusing. Just stating a fact.
“Yeah.” He looked down at his hands. “I thought I was protecting you. I thought...” He exhaled heavily. “I thought a lot of things that turned out to be wrong.”
The room went quiet again. A motorcycle roared past on the street below. Someone laughed, the sound distant and disconnected from their small bubble of painful truth.
“I forgive you,” she said eventually. Then, when he jerked his head up to stare at her in disbelief, she added, softer: “I’m tired, Dom. So tired of carrying this. So I forgive you.”
It was so much more than he could have hoped for. More than he deserved.
She did look tired. Her eyelids were going heavy.
She was fighting it, the way she fought everything, with her jaw set and her spine straight.
But the wine had loosened something, and the food had helped, and the adrenaline that had been holding her upright since they’d walked out of Villa Pandora was finally running dry.
“Come on,” Dom said, taking the wine glass from her hand and setting it on the table. “You need to rest.”
She didn’t protest as he drew her to her feet, walked her to the bed, and pulled back the thin blanket. She sat on the edge and reached for her shoes with hands that weren’t quite steady.
“I’ve got it.” He crouched and undid the straps himself, setting each sandal aside. When he looked up, she was watching him with an expression he couldn’t name—something raw and open that she hadn’t let him see in years.
He stood. “Lie down.”
She swung her legs up and settled back against the pillow, still in her dress. He pulled the blanket up to her shoulder and straightened.
“Dom.”
He stopped.
“Stay with me.”
The way she was looking at him now, all soft and vulnerable, he would’ve given her anything she asked for. “Okay.”
He walked around to the other side of the bed, sat on the edge, pulled off his shoes, and stretched out on top of the blanket beside her. He held out his arm so she could tuck herself against his chest if she wanted to.
She did. She turned into him and pressed her face to his shoulder, one hand curling loosely in the fabric of his shirt. He wrapped his arm around her and felt some tight, knotted thing in his chest ease a fraction.
“Twelve hours,” he said.
“I know.”
He felt her breathing slow, felt the tension in her body begin to loosen by degrees. He thought she was almost under when she shifted against him, and then shifted again, more deliberately, and he understood that she was not, in fact, going to sleep.
“Vivi.” He said it carefully.
“I know.” She pressed her mouth to the side of his throat, a slow, open kiss that sent heat straight down his spine.
He kept very still. “You’re exhausted, baby.”
She lifted her head and looked at him in the dim light—her eyes dark, her hair loose around her face. “I need to not think for a while.” She stroked a hand down his chest. “I need to be somewhere else. Just for a little while.”
He swallowed. “This isn’t—I don’t want you to regret it again—”
“I won’t.” She pressed her palm flat against his stomach, and he stopped breathing. “Let me, Dom. Just let me.”
He reached up and touched her face, his thumb brushing her cheekbone. Everything in him that was trying to be careful, trying to be good, trying not to take something she might not mean to give—all of it went quiet when she turned her face into his palm and closed her eyes.
“Okay,” he said.
She kissed him again, slower this time, less about force and more about wanting—about need that wasn’t just sex-deep.
Her hand slid up under his shirt, warm against his skin, fingers splaying as if to memorize the lines of his ribs, the flat of his stomach.
He let her, let her take, let her use him for as much or as little comfort as she needed.
She pushed herself up, straddling his hips, the skirt of her dress pooling around her thighs.
In the glow from the bathroom light, he could see her pupils blown wide, her lips parted.
Her breathing was ragged, but her hands were steady as she unbuttoned his shirt, palms splaying over his chest, nails grazing just enough to make him shiver.
She leaned down and kissed his throat, jaw, mouth.
He let her set the pace, let her take whatever she needed.
He barely moved, except to trace his hands up the backs of her thighs, then higher—finding the edge of her underwear and slipping his fingers beneath the elastic.
He didn’t push. Just rested his hands there, waiting for her to want more.
She wanted more. She worked his pants open. The zipper was loud in the quiet room. She tugged the waistband down and freed his cock, wrapping her hand around it with a sureness that made his head drop back against the mattress.
“Fuck, Viv—”
She pressed her palm over his mouth, shutting him up. “Don’t talk,” she said. “Not right now.”
He smiled against her hand and kissed the center of her palm, then let her go.
She pushed her panties to the side, not bothering to take them off, and guided him inside her in one long, slow slide.
She was dripping, wet enough that he slid in to the hilt with almost no resistance.
She sank down on him, her knees braced against his hips, her hands on his chest. Her head fell forward, hair curtaining her face as she started to move—slow at first, then faster, her breath catching with each thrust.
He’d never seen her like this—so raw, so stripped down, no performance left in it.
She fucked him like she was starving for it, or maybe like she was trying to drown out every awful thing that had happened in the last seventy-two hours.
He let her use him, meeting her rhythm, holding her thighs when she started to shake.
“Fuck, you feel so good,” he murmured, and this time she didn’t shush him, just moved harder, chasing her own pleasure.
He could feel her getting close—the way her nails dug into his shoulders, the way her walls clenched around him.
He reached up to tangle his fingers in her hair and pulled her down to kiss him, hard and deep, and that was the thing that did it.
She broke apart on him, shuddering, her mouth open and silent, her whole body tensed and shaking.
He held it, wanting to keep her there as long as she wanted to be, but she didn’t let up. She moved again, fucking him through her own orgasm, riding him until he spilled inside her, hips bucking, hands tight on her ass.
She collapsed on top of him. He wrapped his arms around her and held her there, his lips against her forehead, her damp hair in his mouth.
They didn’t talk. There was nothing left to say.
Eventually, she rolled off him, kicking the dress off her hips and onto the floor. She lay on her back, staring at the water-stained ceiling, chest rising and falling as she caught her breath. He watched her, watched the slow return of color to her cheeks, the way the tension eased out of her jaw.
He reached out and took her hand, lacing their fingers together on the sheet between them. She squeezed once, then turned her head to look at him. In the shadows, her eyes were unreadable.
“Better?” he asked.
She hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah.” She closed her eyes. “You?”
“Oh yeah.”
He waited, but she didn’t let go of his hand. She shifted closer, so their shoulders touched, then nestled in against his chest, her nose pressed to his collarbone. She was asleep in under a minute, her breathing deep and even.
He stayed awake for a while, staring at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of the taverna below, the distant laughter, the clink of glasses, the occasional burst of music. Life going on, uncaring, while all their world was coming apart.
He didn’t know how they were going to save Sabin. He didn’t know what Praetorian would do when they found out the job was a bust. He didn’t know how to fix any of it.
But he knew he’d go through hell for the woman asleep in his arms if it meant keeping her safe.
He tightened his arms around Vivi and pulled her closer, letting himself finally surrender to exhaustion.